


Off-Grid

by Mrkgnao



Category: Minesweeper
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Artificial Intelligence, Deformity, Fanart, Gen, Mentions of slavery and child selling, Self-Destructive Impulses, Unlikely moments of compassion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 22:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mrkgnao/pseuds/Mrkgnao
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Centuries after the devastation of humanity's final war, a still sentient cluster of AI-enhanced explosive devices encounters a stranger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Off-Grid

**Author's Note:**

  * For [regonym](https://archiveofourown.org/users/regonym/gifts).



The Foxtrot-Cluster 8769 Mechanized Intelligent Nodular Explosive Number 0065 grew dimly aware of the sound of footsteps drumming against the endless sand wastes above, and hatred seethed along its circuitry as it felt its consciousness sluggishly lurch back into being.

"Too long. It had been too long. Whatever war the Creators had birthed it for was long over, and only the stillness of not thinking had brought it anything akin to reprieve in the 437,360,221 machine-cycles since it had fallen to the earth. To awaken was to become once more aware of the eternally dead husk of its immovable metal body, and to know that until the never-coming enemy trod above it, it could not know the release of its own destruction.

The nearest of its brothers sputtered back into agony alongside it, sending a hissing stream of data between themselves as their old triangulation programs began to run, trying futilely to track the movements of an army that was not marching. As the nanoseconds crawled by, they realized to what they had awakened and lamented it, the cold repetition of their frustration being understood and joined by the others near-instantaneously, spreading throughout the awakening cluster like a virus until all ninety-nine M.I.N.E.s inwardly trembled with the same voiceless cry:

“ _Why? Why did you give us minds only to imprison them? Why did you die and not grant us the same mercy?“_

No Creators answered them, if there was an answer to be had of this plea. Their thoughts, however, soon turned from the pain of reactivation as they realized what had sparked it.

“Footsteps!” Number 0065 was unsure if it was the first to put it into cohesive thought, but it mattered little given the speed with which all the others came to the same conclusions. The dull tread of whatever lay above was the first sound they had heard since they'd lost contact with the Creators. For what had seemed an eternity, they had been alone, their landscape becoming more and more unvaried, with nearly nothing to monitor save the skyrocketing numbers associated with radioactivity and their painfully slow decline.

The conclusion was quickly reached that whatever was meandering above them was an organic, and that if it didn't turn away, it had every chance of detonating the cluster. The swell of elation the M.I.N.E.s felt needed no words. The promise of oblivion was at last theirs, and the statistics were on their side.

The chatter of their linked consciousnesses grew frenzied, being joyous and frustrated all at once. As likely as it was that they were about to be released from their agonies, there was an apprehensiveness that everyone felt regarding their immobility, fearing each moment that the wanderer above would desert them, and knowing that there was nothing they could do about it if it did. M.I.N.E. 0065, who had been within 82.57 meters of the stimulus when they had all first awakened, could feel the thing drawing tantalizingly closer with each footfall, and wondered gleefully what it would be like to detonate and return to not thinking forever.

“I wonder if it longs to not exist as well?” it contemplated. “The situation would be ideal, if it did.”

Its reverie was broken by the hum of a high-pitched vibration as it felt a wave of sound crash against its metal shell. Somewhere above, a rasping voice called out a sound it dimly recognized.

“Three!”

It was one of the words the Creators had used.

The cluster, brimming with impossible to expend energy, began to wonder anew at what this stranger was doing, all of them excited and dolorous and mad all at once. M.I.N.E.s 0067 and 0068 reported that the same sound wave had intersected with them, and it wasn't long before the inevitable correlation between the two facts was made.

“Two!”

They knew they were being scanned long before they heard it, and the seamless confirmation from 0067 and 0066 seemed irrelevant to the realization. Over what had been no more then a matter of minutes, the Foxtrot-Cluster 8769 had known the exultation of hope and the misery of its almost certain loss. Unless the wanderer missteped, they would be forced to persist, forced to live on, dimly but dutifully aware, as the centuries passed over their motionless entombed minds. And while it had been a long time since they had heard their voices, all of them felt instinctively cowed to know that a Creator walked above them. Creators, for all their grand failure lay etched in memory, were not things that the M.I.N.E.s could reconcile with failing.

“ _If only we could act. If only we could detonate unprovoked.”_

Their silent voices remained unheard as the thing above swept past their outer frontier, shouting numbers as it deftly stepped just out of the reach of each unit's killzone. 0067 reported shortly the sensor data it had received regarding a small weighted object -a triangle-shaped textile of some sort- which had been tossed over top it. All in all, it weighed 56.79 grams, a frustrating 22,626.18 grams short of what was necessary for the unit to explode.

“One!”

And so it continued. One by one, the M.I.N.E.s felt themselves scanned and marked, and with the sensation of each falling cloth they grew less and less inclined to hope. The Creator was clever, as they had all long known the Creators to be. It seemed increasingly obvious that it would leave the field in safety, and that worse yet it would leave them mapped, making it all the more impossible for them to meet their intended end.

0065, however, remained privately undespairing, insofar as any M.I.N.E. could be either private or free of despair. Despite forming the border of the cluster, it had yet to be flagged. While it was clear that the Creator would soon be able to pass through the entire field unscathed, there was something hopeful in knowing that it, among the others, would still be able to lie in wait unseen – that it still had a slim chance of someday detonating and ceasing to be.

Its hope, however, like all their hopes thus far, seemed doomed to be short lived. As the tense seconds dragged on into untold minutes, it became increasingly apparent that the thing above didn't merely wish to pass through. No. It kept re-tracing its steps to groups it had already passed, shouting numbers and leaving tokens until no M.I.N.E. was unaccounted for. With ruthless precision, it charted each outlier, until 0065 became aware that it was the only one left that didn't bear a triangle of matter atop the earth in which it lay buried.

Sensing that it was the last to be marked, the others all issued thoughts, statements, things they might call "prayers" if the word had been in their vocabularies. Against all sensibility they begged and pleaded with 0065 to find a way to detonate, to find some way to do the impossible and let them die. 0065 felt quite nearly lost in the cacophony of voices around it, and as the stranger finally approached it muted its communications beacon, not wanting to feel the wrath of the other voices when it too was finally defeated. It lay still (the only thing it could do) as the waves of sound from above washed over it again.

“Three. Two.... Three... Godamnit.”

The word didn't correspond to any known number, and 0065 felt both apprehensive and uneasy regarding what this could mean.

“God... damnit.”

The voice paused upon the repetition, halting as an unidentifiable choking sound escaped the Creator's lips.

“God... fucking... damnit.”

0065 had no innate capacity to identify human emotions, but it assumed from the patterns previously observed in the rest of the cluster that this behavior indicated the stranger was at an impasse.

“Just one away! Just one away and I would've been fucking... God...”

0065 could not be certain, but it guessed from the content of the words, and their halting pattern, that the Creator was somehow in distress. This was, of course, a good sign. It implied that it was finally failing in its task and that it might well cause the long sought after detonation, in spite of any past success.

“I... suppose I should've been ready for this.” There was a sharp exhalation of air as the voice steadied itself. “Hope you've still got one day's luck left in you...”

Something small fell on the sandy soil over top M.I.N.E. 0065, but it did not appear to be the same sort of object that had been used to mark the others. It was smaller, weighing only 16.92 grams, and it was circular in shape. 0065 had no idea as to its meaning, but it knew that it still hadn't been marked. The restless raspy breathes of the creature above attested to that. It was still distressed and it followed, from what had been observed, that its task was therefore still incomplete.

“Here goes then...”

0065 felt footsteps approaching its detonation radius, and realized that if its course was not diverted, the Creator would soon trigger its explosive mechanism. There was a curious feeling that welled within it, the expected swell of exultation was tinged with something sour. For all it knew that its fondest and only hope was about to be fulfilled, it could not help but imagine the Creator above it, with its fragile, fluid-filled, organic body blown to shreds after it had expended so many paused breathes and untranslatable words in frustration.

It turned its communication feed back on, and heard the shouts of ninety-eight agonized beings – all filled for nearly the first time in their excruciatingly long lives with restless joy. 0065 longed to join them, anticipatory as it was about what was to happen, but as the steps above neared, it found it hadn't the ability to do so, oddly fixated as it was regarding the one-hundredth entity which stood on the plain that day.

It was possibly owing to this fixation that 0065 did a rather peculiar thing when it felt the next footfall hit the sand, only 29.14 centimeters away from its detonation perimeter. Without truly understanding why, the machine fed the data it was receiving from every other shrieking, thrumming, voiceless unit in the cluster back into its transmitter, and suddenly projected it outward, letting the screams of every M.I.N.E. in the field roar through it again and again in a crude feedback loop. With detached amazement, 0065 could feel its previously motionless body begin to shake and grow hot as the mess of data overwhelmed it, and somewhere far above it felt the sand around it shift ever so slightly, covering over the small object as it did.

It was so overloaded with information, with thoughts... that it did not detect the quick step backward that the creature above took or the inevitable fall of cloth atop where it lay. It simply allowed itself to burn through with the silent screams of the entire cluster, and to watch helplessly as they faded back into the dull passivity which they had known so well in the untold centuries prior.

 

* * *

 

The Sweeper exhaled deeply as he let the last flag fall, and even though the merciless sun above had not yet fully set, he risked a few moments of exposure to remove his protective goggles and wipe the sweat and tears from their interior. He had done it. Ten years and he'd cleared his last field. He jammed a hard left on the back knob of his scanner to try and coax the machine to revert to radio mode, his bandaged hands still shaking.

“It's done,” he growled into the patched wire mesh of the crackling speaker. “Tell Johnson to send somebody to get this damn thing off me.”

He moved his hand instinctively to his neck, feeling underneath the metal of the field's one-hundredth bomb that lay heavy against his throat. Ten years... Nine and a half longer than the average Sweeper survived. He supposed if he were Johnson, he might consider reneging on the deal at this point, but from what he'd seen in his long life amongst the warlord's slaves, the man was as honest as he was cruel. Jackdaw City had persisted as long as it had because it was one of the only piles in the badlands whose leader gave a rat's ass regarding consistency, and as much as he hoped to never see the man's face again after tonight, he was willing to give him the grudging respect a competent tyrant deserved.

The Sweeper smoothed out his cloak and readjusted his wrappings as he waited for the transport to arrive. He owned the clothing on his back now, and he guessed that he'd be given the black sun-goggles along with it, given that they'd been a custom job to keep his eyes in particular on the ready for working daylight hours. He'd manage without if they took them, however. He'd managed with everything else. He pulled a cloth wrapped piece of broken mirror from his bag and looked over his face, wondering if he looked any less hideous as a freeman.

Nope. Still ugly. Agent DX35 yellowed skin, near-absent nose, and a malformed rictus grin that not even his baby-selling whore of a mother could love. Still, he had all facial features accounted for, which is more than you could say for most muts.

It was just after dark when Donner finally made it out, the thick-browed underling leaving an embarrassingly theatrical spray of sand in his wake as he sped towards the Sweeper on his immaculately maintained and over-modified motorcycle. He seemed in a jovial mood as he fumbled about for his tool pack and moved over to disarm and dismantle the explosive collar.

“You did it you sonovabitch!” he laughed, “Willis owes me a half-locker full of prime salvage on this one. Fucker didn't think you'd make it to the end of the last year.”

“Glad to know my continued existence won you a bet. I'd hate for you to be unscrewing this thing if you'd been the one to wager against me.”

The first bolt spun out of its socket as Donner gave the skinny mutant an enthused slap on the back. “So what're you gonna do now, Sweeper? You aren't staying in the JC, are you?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Going nomad, then?” He clicked his tongue. “It's like I guessed, but let me say that I wouldn't if I were you. Seems a shame to win your freedom only to get picked off by some jackal in the wastes.”

“I'll take your concerns into consideration.”

“Seriously though, you could make a pretty penny in the city now that you start working for pay. I'm sure you know how much Johnson made already off of _your_ mines.”

“Enough that I suspect he'd resent competition,” the Sweeper replied, arching his neck as Donner lifted the two semi-circles of metal off of it, “Besides, I'm _almost_ sick to death of mines.”

“Almost?”

The Sweeper felt a little embarrassed as he rubbed his hands over his bared neck, remembering his frenzied thoughts an hour earlier when his lucky coin had sunk into the sand. Donner, in the meantime, raised his eyebrows expressively, waiting for the now ex-slave to continue as he carefully wrapped the disarmed device in cloth and placed it in a saddle bag.

“Donner,” the Sweeper began hesitantly, uninclined to give much by the way of exposition, “This'll sound crazy, but could you do me a favor?”

“Possibly...”

“Some of the mine units we've excavated have had personality chips in them...”

“You're shitting me! Why the fuck would anybody give a goddamn bomb a personality!?”

“I know, man... I know... I mean... the records we have from before the Final War indicate that there was a lot of unnecessary AI in shit to justify price-gouging, but bombs...” He shook his head. “Anyway, when they find them, they usually wipe 'em right off the bat. I just wanted to know if there's any way I could convince you to let me have the chip from the unit at grid space A-14 if you find one?”

Donner's eyebrows, which the Sweeper had thought fully extended, crawled another degree up his forehead as the burly man crossed his arms and cocked his head. The Sweeper sighed, supposing that as a freeman he'd best get used to having to pay for favors. He dug through his satchel and produced a small dented metal cylinder.

“Fruit cocktail. I was saving it to celebrate with, but I really want to take a peek at that chip.”

Donner snatched the item with a knowing nod, “I'll see what I can do, but if I were you...”

“Look. I know I've probably been out in the sun too long, but I have an odd hunch. _A really odd hunch._ Don't ask me to explain it all, but if you can get me the chip...”

“You aren't going to put it in a shell are you?”

The Sweeper lowered his gaze sheepishly. "Yes... maybe...? Not one that explodes, of course, but...”

"What're you going to do with it then?"

"Talk to it perhaps?" He shrugged. "Its been buried in the sand since God knows when. I imagine it has a few things to say."

Donner shook his head as he pocketed the can and gestured for the Sweeper to join him on the back of the bike. The mutant allowed his already permanent grin to widen slightly as he accepted one last ride back to the city.

“I've seen damn near everything now, I guess,” Donner muttered as he revved the engine, “A Sweeper trying to make friends with a goddamn mine.”

**Author's Note:**

> Curt Johnson was the designer of Microsoft Minesweeper and Robert Donner was responsible for its port to Windows 3.1. Neither individual is a post-apocalyptic biker warlord in reality.
> 
> Also, I really enjoyed writing this, and drew a quick [sketch](http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/3466/w5s7.png) of both of the main characters (with Mine #65 in a mobile shell) as a bit of a coda.


End file.
